


Parallel Lines

by foxghost



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Bloodplay, Bondage, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Genital Torture, M/M, Non Consensual, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2012-04-02
Packaged: 2017-11-02 12:42:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxghost/pseuds/foxghost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For this very specific, spoilerific <a href="http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/8033.html?thread=33410913#t33410913">prompt</a><br/>Anders meets Cullen while in solitary and they enter into a rocky, accidental friendship that turns into more.</p><p>While the Knight Commander believed that solitary confinement was its own punishment, a couple of templars decided to take matters into their own hands and try to push Anders until he would turn to blood magic on his own, giving them an excuse to kill him.</p><p>Knowing me, the rating will climb to explicit in three chapters... (Oh look I was right.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Falling through the cracks

The tower was a gilded cage. It was very glamorous; enchanted mage robes embroidered in gold, three square meals a day, dessert at dinner with their very own wine at the table, made by Tranquil. It was a good life, until one saw the cracks.

They were numerous, if a mage knew where to look. Anders smiled at everyone and pretended all was well as he walked through the library and browsed for an herbalism manual. High above him, some apprentice was going through his harrowing, and this one would not survive, but not because he gave in to a demon.

He was cut down by a templar blade for staying in the fade too long.

An hour later would bring another mage the harrowing chamber, and this one would sidestep the barely scrubbed away blood pool and submit himself to the rite of Tranquility, the golden sun of the chantry laced with lyrium burned into him wiping all that was him away, leaving an empty shell that walked and talked but thereafter neither felt nor dreamt. A controlled kind of undead.

There was a blood stain near the front of the library that was just barely noticeable. Only the people who were already aware of it would have known to look for it, and sometimes the rare observant apprentice did ask, since even children knew that only iron rusted, not stone.

These were the scratches in the gilding. They revealed the iron underneath, where everything was coated in a layer of dusty red from hundreds of years of built up mage blood, from times where the right of annulment was called, when the entire tower was drenched in running crimson.

The dwarves wrote in their books that stone remembered. Perhaps it did.

Down here in the dark and the damp with only stone around him, Anders wondered that if he talked to the walls, it would talk back, reciting memories of long past gone mages smelling of fear and cold sweat, huddled into a corner waiting for a templar's blade to fall. And not because they had fallen to demons, but because the chantry decided that everyone in the tower must die.

Anders ran away six times. He was a bit of a legend by now, the mage with the vanishing act, stepping through solid stone walls out into the wide open world. Reality was a lot less mystical; no secret passages or spells to render oneself invisible, more along the lines of tied up silk knickers and guards put to sleep with deep mushrooms and deathroot.

They forgave him the first few times, if scrubbing pans with the Tranquil in the kitchens for a month was considered forgiveness. When the punishment obviously did not work - nothing could have kept him from sleeping under open skies, a canopy of stars above him so close he could reach out and touch them, no walls, just the infinite - they had to up the ante. He was left in the dungeons for the fourth and fifth times, solitary for two weeks, then a month.

After the two weeks, he stayed put for four months before running away again. After the one month straight in solitary, he planned his escape right away without waiting at all, and he was gone within a week.

This time they didn't tell him how long he had to serve his sentence. There was a moment during his strip search where he was hit by a wall of fear, as the two anonymous templars fully decked out in their gear and their skirts were close enough for Anders to hear their breathing. Anders was silenced and naked and he realised, he was truly helpless, as one stuck a rounded glass probe inside him to check for contraband.

"What do you expect me to hide up there, a file?" He mumbled, not caring if his mouth got him into more trouble. "And what would I use a file on in a room with no windows?"

"Keep taking and you'll find yourself with something else up there," Orlesian accent, gruff with drink and something else. Older templars were always iffy; half of them were out of their minds.

"You must be joking," and this one was younger and definitely sounded Ferelden. "Mages aren't people. Would you stick your prick in a mabari?"

_Funny how morality goes out the window the moment you're dealing with a mage, boys,_ Anders cursed at them silently. It wasn't as though he had never lain with a templar before, but those were his choices and they were recruits, green and fresh without the stink of prejudice. At least they didn't treat him like an animal.

"The Knight Commander here's too soft on you mage types," the older one had one gauntleted hand in Anders' hair, flexible joints catching the silken strands. "But I don't need to beat you to make your life a living hell. Make my job difficult and I'll make your stay twice as hard for you. Do you understand?"

"Yes Ser," Anders said, tilting his syllables to match the Orlesian's. "Thank you, Ser. I'd be shaking in my boots if I was wearing them, Ser."

The younger templar laughed; the sound echoed in his helm, too loud in the gloom. The older one yanked his hand free, pulling whatever hair caught in them out by their roots. Anders gritted his teeth, giving him nothing.

"You'll be begging for death before the month is out," then he was pushed into the little cell, barely enough room for a cot with a ceiling that went up and up into the dark.

Runes glowed softly in the wall, faint lyrium blue like the veins he saw in his dreams, but these drained his mana constantly. At first, he thought its colour was blue, but by the fifth day, if the changing of the guard was regular and he could count their days by them, he realized that it was simply a glow that had no colour at all.

Anders was in a Tevinter dungeon built by dwarves and used by the Chantry. He found all that strangely ironic and by turns funny, that with all the power of the empire, they didn't do any of their own construction, relying on the dwarves, which built everything out of proportion. Try as he might, Anders couldn't make out the ceiling - he must have been at least four or five levels underground, with nothing but rock on the other side of the stone wall, with the ceiling stretching impossibly away above him.

It made the walls even more oppressive, if that was possible.

They were subtle; he'd give them that. The food was gruel, overly salted one day and completely flavourless the next, his drinking water was pissed into one guard shift out of three, and every few days or so, his sleep was interrupted constantly, each loud bang on the door sounded not minutes after his eyes closed. Anders was certain that it was the same templar, but when they didn't talk there was no way for him to tell.

At the end of one week, one of them did talk to him, only to bark out commands. Anders thought to disobey, but to what end? He had no weapons and no magic. _Keep your head down,_ Karl used to tell him. Anders was never good at that sort of thing.

"Back into the door and put your hands through the slot," they were quickly tied, three loops with a rope and a quick knot that he could undo easily but these were templars, not sailors. His hands were pushed back through the slot, and the door opened outwards.

Two templars trudged in, and by the sound of them talking to one another, Anders guessed that they were the same two that threw him in on the first day.

His ropes were quickly traded in for the manacles attached to the wall, arms pulled above him so high it forced him on to his toes. They were iron and rusty with age, covered by something flaky and not entirely like rust. Anders held still as one cold bucket of water was dumped over him, followed by a rough scrubbing with a bar of brown lye soap, stinging and reddening his skin, and a ice cold bucket of water was dumped over him again, leaving him shivering in his bonds.

"Your magic doesn't work down here, mage," the Orlesian showed him a small blade, just a sliver of rough steel wrapped up in a bandage. He ran the tip of it over Ander's neck, not enough pressure to break the skin.

He began to quake in fear, the strain of trying to hold himself still so that it wouldn't actually cut him only making it all worse. The blade dragged over his neck and over his collarbone, drawing a line over one nipple. The templar had one hand over his shoulder, keeping him still. Anders could hear his breathing, laboured behind his helm, and the templar's skirt was close enough to brush up against him.

"You liked that, you sick bastard," Anders was sure he felt it, something hard jabbing at him under that skirt, rubbing up on his thigh. It wasn't the right thing to say to a person holding a blade to his chest, but he was never one for the 'right' things to say.

Anders had always been impulsive. A week of not speaking to anyone at all only made it worse, the words stored inside him bubbling to the surface like so much bile. The templar dropped the blade, unbuckling his gauntlet without a word, before doling out a backhand hard enough for Anders' vision to black out for a moment.

Then he was let out of his manacles and they were gone, the door banging shut behind him. Anders rubbed feeling back into his hands. Cold and shivering, he crawled his way back to the bed, finding it bare - the mattress still there covered in burlap but there was no blanket on top of it. Anders curled into a ball on the bed, hugging his knees to his chest for warmth.

He didn't remember falling asleep, the shivering getting worse and worse over the night, if it was night, and the rough lye soap never quite washed off entirely, leaving his skin raw in patches where it rubbed against his rough sheets.

Anders dreamt of boiling red oceans with a green grey sky over them, sailing in a ship built of bones. When a wave hit them hard, spraying water all over the deck, he wiped at his face, hand coming away from his skin wet with blood.

"The sky is blue," someone said, and Anders wondered if he was going mad and the stone was really talking back at his delirious babbling. "I'm pretty sure the ocean is blue too, or green. I've never had a chance to see it for myself."

He couldn't see the face behind that voice, even though no helm covered it. Anders tried to blink away the sweat clouding his vision, but they were heavy and the grit in them scraped at his eyes, and he winced. The furrow was going to become permanent between his eyebrows. That someone who never saw the ocean was wiping at his face with a soft cloth, moist with warm water and his touch was gentle.

Deep in his fever, Anders let that touch lull him back to sleep.

When he woke he was alone, and Anders shook his head, clearing away the clouds that had invaded his mind while he slept. He was so hungry he was certain his stomach was eating itself, and parched as though he hadn't had anything to drink in days.

Anders swung his legs off the bed and nearly put his foot in a tray, with half a loaf of bread sitting in it, along with a small hunk of cheese and a pitcher of what smelled like watered down wine.

He picked it up and ate it ravenously, tearing chunks of bread out with his teeth; it was the first solid food he was given all week, and while he was sick he had lost count of the days. The logical part of him knew that it was just day-old bread that needed soaking in wine to be palatable and the cheese was only a heel, hard with age, but hunger and the general going without made it fit for the gods.

Hazily, he tried to recall the person in his dream, but all he could remember was a shock of red hair on an upside down and too young face. Not wearing a helm either, which was unusual, and treated him well while he lain ill, which was even stranger.

Outside, it was morning. Cullen swung his legs over the side of his bunk bed, and promptly hit his head on the top bunk getting up. He yawned, and reached for his daily dose of lyrium, neatly dispensed in a paper pouch on a rack with his name on it. He slipped it under his tongue and waited for the numbing sensation to turn into something that zinged and brought the world into focus.

The tranquil came in at predawn and lined the shelves with the stuff, but they were so quiet he never saw them.

"Late night?" Said a voice above him, "sneaked out to visit your girlfriend, did you?"

"Good morning, Ser Carroll," Cullen grumbled, rubbing at his forehead. "There is no girlfriend."

"Holding out on me, are you? Come on, you can tell me. Does she have a ... friend?" Carroll waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Cullen ignored him. The lights in their room were on, wisps in lanterns and sconces by the door lit with an eerie blue light bordering on but not quite white. It was so gray in here.

Caroll moved like a gnat, for the lack of a better description. He darted from one spot to another, grabbing a shirt here, checking his time sheet there, moving a mile a minute.

"Will you stop it? You're giving me a headache."

Carroll chattered all the way to the communal baths and all the way back, with Cullen giving him one word answers hoping to shake the jittery templar off with his unresponsiveness, but he was not so easily discouraged.

"It's that star apprentice always going in and out of Irving's office, isn't it? She really gets around, you know that runaway mage down in solitary? I heard she even -"

"That's quite enough," Cullen said, louder than was necessary. "Amell isn't like the rest of them. She's much too young to be - doing any of those things you're insinuating."

Seeing that his friend was actually upset, even Carroll knew when to shut his trap, "all right. Just don't say I didn't warn you."

Ser Carroll walked away backwards, holding his hands out in front of him in a placating gesture before turning around and running off. Cullen sighed; there were rules and his friend didn't follow any of them. Running in hallways was strictly prohibited.

He blushed then, and Cullen blushed easily, as he remembered that he did sneak out last night, but not to see a girlfriend. He had gone down into the solitary cells and it wasn't even his shift, walking right by a snoring guard to visit a sick mage.

Four days ago, it was his evening shift and the mage didn't touch the tray of gruel he slipped through the slot at dinner. He went in to check on him then, and found Anders passed out on the floor, naked and shivering. Cullen had to run back up the stairs, bringing down extra blankets - why didn't he have a single one? - and towels and hot water.

The mage was feverish and mad, and Cullen saw that as his responsibility since Anders had taken ill on his shift. It was only his duty that kept him there, signing up for extra shifts until he was better.

Only that, not the way torchlight shone off his red gold hair or the way he turned his head into Cullen's neck as he was picked up, scorching temperature burning a hole in his skin, or the way he tried to make out Cullen's face as though he was worth remembering, someone needed and important.

He flushed crimson as he wiped the mage down with a moist towel, wrapping him in neatly with a blanket afterwards so he could look away at last, not be mesmerized by the way his skin glowed in the runic lights that rendered all else colourless.

Cullen stood, still as a statue, and let his mind wander. He remembered his helm today, so the trappings were complete. He gleamed in silverite, the metal sitting heavy atop his shoulders, his priest skirt weighted to drape to his ankles, and he pointed his toes in the perfect angle that all recruits were taught to do, distributing all that armour over his heels in a position that literally lasted for hours.

In his cage of silver Cullen stood and only half watched the mages as his mind went on a journey, described in Anders' babble of red oceans and green skies. He added pirates and sea battles, fuzzy at the edges, filled in with the faces he knew, of Solona Amell dressed in a velvet gown and bound to the mast with rope, and himself, Cullen the pirate swinging across on a rope - attached to Maker knew not what - and coming to the rescue.

He was aware of the real Solona the moment she entered the room. She walked with someone, a tall and handsome man with brown hair who already passed his harrowing and wearing his mage robes. They sat together, and he was sure they joined hands under the table, out of sight.

When they disappeared behind a shelf holding ancient treatises of Thedas an hour later, Cullen didn't walk over to interrupt them. He blinked away his annoyance, that urge to do something, anything at all, to keep her somehow to himself. It was all pointless. He was never going to say anything to her, as he had long known that it was impossible since day one. What use was there in pining?

Honour. Duty. Those things had value and place in his life. He could only watch her from afar and let her live out her caged life while he lived his, parallel lines which did not meet.

Cullen watched them as they each emerged from behind the shelf, hair a little disheveled and cheeks flushed, the man leaving first, then Solona, taking a book out of the shelf to sign out of the library to hide her purpose. He clenched his fist, the metal clicking in his hand as his fingers tapped against his palm.

They moved around him, day in and day out, playing out the little drama of their lives with love and hate and turnabouts. Some of them did not live beyond childhood, even Solona might not live through her harrowing. Each of them taking what they could in the small space allowed them, and even that was more than what Cullen had.

All he was entitled to was to observe, to live through these little snippets he scrounged through the gaps in his helm, surrounded by what he wanted but could never have.

He heard whispers and gossip of Anders, of whom he had started to think of as his charge, now that he had taken an interest in the mage's health. Sixth escape and they threw him in solitary, and the rumour that went around was that he would be down there for a year. Seventh would probably bring him either death or tranquility, and yet the man kept trying.

He was fascinating to most, and a week after his reappearance and the hand-down of his punishment Anders was still a hot topic. Charming and likeable, by the concerned tones of the mages who spoke of him, a friend to most and a lover to some. They wanted to find out how he was, how he was faring, and they lived through him in a way; the mage who was outside and had all these adventures and saw the ocean and mountains for himself.

It was as though he still lived here among them, a ghost flitting from one table to another, his old jokes and his escapades told and retold. He was still free and he had presence, even locked up in a little cell in the depths of the tower.

Cullen listened, and lived through him too. Inside his helm, he felt the touch of sea breeze on his brow and the smell of salt carried in the wind. The world around him disappeared and he heard the distant fluttering of sails.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cullen always fascinated me - he was so innocent and sweet before Broken Circle with his stuttering and his running away the moment Amell spoke to him, but he also managed to be the only templar to survive inside the tower. Maybe that was what it took; a genuine will to help others and his faith in his duty that kept the demons from getting at him. In exchange, his survival took away that innocence.
> 
> Between DA:O and DA2, he managed to grow up and mellow out, recovering from PTSD in one year or less. That makes him about as resilient as Anders, in my headcanon. So when I saw a prompt that threw them together over the most messed up time of Anders' life, I couldn't say no.


	2. Light in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our two protagonists move ever closer, as flowers turn their heads towards the sun.

Everything was smaller down here; a tiny room, a narrow cot, walls pressing in on all sides. There were rats, but not in his cell, where even the smallest hole was filled up with mortar and straw, leaving the only means of escape for air his oak and iron door with its hinged slot. The intention was probably to press the person inside down to size.

There were grooves in the floor, stone worn down by bare feet, where someone else had done what he was doing now, an endless march back and forth between the cot and the door. On his long legs Anders counted four paces to the door, his steps silent. The person who was here before him was shorter, making the trip in five steps.

Anders made up a persona for this other inhabitant of his cell, who stayed down here long enough to wear the rough stone down to a smooth luster, lining the blocks that made up the walls around him with scratches that marked the days. A renegade like himself, with dashing good looks.

He probably died down here, spending the rest of his life in the dark and damp. Anders tried not to think about that. He had no idea how long this was to last, but the Knight Commander wasn't a monster and he would never have agreed to keeping Anders down here indefinitely.

His toes caught on something hard, and Anders bent to pick it up. It was a sliver of metal, sharpened on both edges and hastily wrapped in a bandage, the ends not even tied. _Your magic doesn't work down here, mage._ He could still hear that voice, rough and drunk and tinged with sickening arousal as the knife tip dragged thin lines over his skin.

 _No way. They actually want me to turn._ Magic was easily negated with the runes, but it worked on mana, not life force. One blood mage against two templars was good odds; even against five his chances were decent. Anders considered it. He could spend the rest of his life down here, or he could use blood magic to escape.

He took the four steps from his cot to the door, banging on it with his fist. The higher, wider slot opened, and Anders dropped the shiv through the opening. It clanked on a metal boot before hitting the floor soundlessly, bandaged side down. The slot clanged shut as the templar moved to examine it.

A pause while the templar took his time figuring out what he was holding, then a familiar voice sounded, "where did you get this?"

"I found it. On the floor," it wasn't exactly a lie. Anders could have told him the truth, but what if they all worked together in a 'good templar, bad templar' routine? Two to pick on him, one to be kind, all of them turning on him if he tried to get the kind one to help him. Anders could take care of himself well enough.

Hope was a precious thing down here, and once extinguished it was hard to fan its embers. He already had his own stint in solitary - the fade was a place where each mage was alone, facing the demons who lied and cajoled and tempted. The only one he could trust was himself.

A templar's kindness was always double-edged, no better than a demon's promise.

"I need to come in and check your arms," then there was complete silence again, and Anders realized after a few seconds that he was waiting for permission. "Um, may I come in?"

"I'm not decent, if that's what you're asking," they had him stripped when he came in, and he wasn't given a scrap of clothing, not even small clothes. Anders wasn't ashamed of his nudity, either. Living in a dormitory wore down his modesty to nothing a long time ago.

There was more metal clanging as the templar outside shifted from foot to foot in a nervous dance, "can you ... sit down and throw a cover over yourself?"

Anders thought this one must be completely stupid or much too trusting - if he had one shiv, who was to say he didn't have another one? He could have lured him in here and hid a knife under the covers until the templar was close enough for him to stick a sharp piece of metal between this gorget and helm.

The tin man outside his door was very lucky that Anders wasn't a killer, and if he was, not one to think ahead enough to hide a weapon under the covers.

"Come in," Anders said, pulling the blanket over his groin. The templar actually opened the door an inch to peek through it, just to check that Anders hadn't lied about being decent before opening the door wide, bringing a torch with him.

Anders closed his eyes against the brightness and held out his arms, underside up. He was accustomed to darkness now, able to see every detail of his surroundings down to the faint etchings carved into the ancient wood of his cot and the impressions on his stone floor. He let his eyes open to small slits, taking in the bright red hair of the man before him with the intent green eyes and the furrow in his brow. There were no cuts, not even scars, on Anders' arms.

"I'm a healer, not a blood mage," two weeks - had it been two weeks already? - of solitary hadn't robbed him of his ability to talk to anyone, and barring that, anything. If this templar wasn't here, Anders would have talked to the walls or to himself. "Blood mages can't heal. It's pretty much first year fundamentals. Or do they only teach you how to oppress us mages in your training?"

It was just his luck, then, that all the people around him liked to talk and Cullen was short on words, "they teach us to protect you from demons and the populace from you, mage."

"Oh look, lucky me. I get to talk to a chantry mouthpiece. Tell me, templar, do you have any ideas of your own?" Anders crossed his arms, defiance in the set of his jaw.

Cullen's mouth opened, snapped shut, then it opened again, flapping like a fish with nothing coming out. This was just like the time he had tried talking to Amell, but instead of the too many words that fought their way through his mouth stumbling over each other like building blocks, he had nothing at all. He glanced away, avoiding the mage's golden gaze in the light of his torch.

"Are you feeling better?"

He looked lost for Anders to take pity on him, not to mention that he was truly thankful. "I am. Shit," he scooted over on the cot, leaving enough space beside him for the templar to sit down, but he only stood there looming like the statue he was inside and out. "Listen. I'm just - it's hard not to take it out on you when you're the only person available to take it out on. Thank you. For the food and ... stuff."

Anders didn't mention the half-remembered conversation they had or the way smooth skin on the templar's hand felt against his brow. They seemed too intimate and best forgotten, closer than the trysts he had with the one in a closet or stolen kisses behind the statue of Andraste in the tower's chantry. It wasn't an act of pleasure-seeking, but genuine concern, antithetical to the image he held in mind of templars, not to be examined too closely.

Taking one's enemies and mistaking them for friends was a quick way to end up on the business end of a sword of mercy.

"It is my duty to take care of you, since you fell ill on my watch," the wooden templar with wooden words stared at the flickering shadows on the wall. "There is no need to thank me."

"Other people's mothers teach their children to say 'you're welcome' when they're thanked, carrot-top," Anders couldn't help but smile as the templar's eyes widened at the nerve of this prisoner who just gave him a nickname. "Do you have a name, templar?"

"It's Cullen. Um, Ser Cullen," it always seemed a bit pompous to use his own title while introducing himself. He'd heard other people do it but it sounded wrong coming out of his own mouth.

"Cullen um Ser Cullen," Anders grinned at the templar as he cringed, "I'm Anders."

"I know that," Cullen countered. The teasing was getting to his cheeks and they fought to rival his hair in its fiery colouring. He decided then that this was worse than talking to Amell and the way she covered her laugh with her hand while he fidgeted uncomfortably in his skirts.

For all of Solona Amell's flirtations, they went in circles and led nowhere. The girl was smart and ambitious, with a bright future ahead of her, and she obviously planned on being First Enchanter one day. While they mosty turned a blind eye when mages consorted with one another, the rules on relations between templars and mages were strictly enforced.

Cullen believed in rules. There were hard boundaries in his life, and Solona Amell was on the other side of such a boundary. Anders, on the other hand, was in limbo. He had fallen through the cracks of their gilded cage and he belonged to neither category Cullen understood. Was a mage even a mage without his magic?

"What else do you know about me, hmm?" Anders tilted his head a little to the side and squinted, pouty lips quirking up in a slightly lopsided smile.

 _Everything_ , Cullen wanted to say. He knew that Anders was in Denerim, where he spent an entire month in a brothel. One time he climbed over the Frostback mountains with magic and the hunters had to go through the Dales to find him, and yet another time they caught him boarding a ship in Highever.

"Um, they talk about you. The mages, I mean," and here Anders was still looking at him with that glint in his eyes, all his attention solely on Cullen.

No one ever looked at him like that. Cullen was always passed over; too quiet, too shy, too much of a stick in the mud.

"I take all the risks, they get all the entertainment. It figures," Anders chuckled. His delivery was lined with velvet, thought Cullen; it echoed, spiralling into the gloom where even his torch was not able to illuminate. "Your order should really be paying me to keep the other mages happy."

"What do you mean?"

"I bring back stories of the world so that no one else has to escape. Then I get punished for it - for wanting to be free and not live by your bloody rules, and all the mages can see what happens when someone disobeys. Keeps the rest of the flock from running off."

"We don't keep mages in the tower because it's a punishment, Anders. We do it to keep everyone safe."

"Wow. And he really believes it," Anders threw up his hands. Perhaps he was wrong to think that it was nice to have someone to talk to once in a while. It was like taling to a wall.

"I have faith in the sacred duties of the Order," Cullen pointed his toes and kept his back straight and imagined that the righteous fire of the Maker was behind his words. He backed away as Anders began to laugh, crazed and amused. Cullen told himself that he wasn't retreating, only that his task was done and he had no more business being in the cell with Anders anymore.

"Faith, Cullen. Faith is just a word templars use when they don't have a reason of their own to back things up," Anders raised his voice as Cullen closed the door behind him. "Why am I even here? Figure that out and we'll have something to talk about."

Cullen did think about it. He couldn't understand why Anders wanted to run - sure, they were all stuck here in a little tower in a little island in the middle of a lake, but they were fed and clothed and warm in winter. Outside, people had to work the fields or forage, digging out a life one shovel-full of dirt at a time. During the war, when the Orlesians invaded Ferelden, people starved outside but the Chantry's neutrality guaranteed safety for all their charges, templar and mage alike.

Why would Anders throw all that way for an ideal that didn't technically exist?

"It doesn't have to do with safety - it's the principle of the thing. I was taken away from my parents because I was born a mage," they continued their debate over the scattered shifts that Cullen took on, Anders talking through a slit in the door and Cullen standing still as a statue in the narrow corridor. "They weren't allowed to write me and they didn't even know where the Circle kept me after that. To them it's like I was never born."

Cullen didn't have parents and he couldn't relate. Anders had so many experiences that he simply never had; he might as well have been a Qunari for all that they had in common, "I grew up in an orphanage in Redcliffe."

There was silence on the other side of the door, the pressure let off the door and on again, the wood creaking slightly as Anders shifted, "what was it like?"

"It was a lot like the apprentice quarters here. Separate dormitories for boys and girls, set meal times, curfews. Strict rules," Cullen was good at following rules. He did his sums and read his books and recited the chant. When the Order's recruiters came to the orphanage, he was at the top of their list.

He could have taken a trade and spent the rest of his life hammering at a forge for king and country, but the templar order promised adventure and excitement in hunting down apostates. He was only eight when he made his choice, spending the next ten years training before he took his vows and his first dose of lyrium. By then he knew that he didn't have the aptitude to kill anyone. Instead of adventure he had landed a post in the tower, a living statue to deck their halls day in and day out.

"And you joined the templars to repay their kindness in raising you, I'd imagine."

"Why would you think that?" Cullen laughed. The thought of being noble hadn't even occurred to him. Children were by their nature ungrateful. "I was eight. I thought it'd be exciting."

"You must be disappointed," Anders could empathise with that, each time he was marched back, Ser Rylock glaring holes into his skull and him chattering on and on to keep her from killing him finally.

"Not really," Cullen shrugged. It was a quiet life, but easy compared to that of the farmer or the smith's, and at least here his life wasn't in danger. The hunters sent into the wilds to apprehend apostates often did not come back.

"Don't you wish you can do things sometimes? Meet a nice girl, get married, have kids," his tone became bitter, "and hope they don't turn out to be mages."

"I guess," Cullen's thoughts turned to Solona, and if he wasn't a templar he could marry her. Mages in good standing were allowed marriages to commoners. Then again, Solona wasn't a woman for marriage. She was a woman for power and glory. "But I wouldn't know where to start."

Cullen experienced so little that wasn't routine that his life had passed him by, each day slipping away quicker than the last like sand through the gaps in his gauntlet. He used to find standing around doing nothing at all an agonizing way to pass the time, but now he was used to his watches and time went by so quickly he was afraid that one day, he would turn around and forget who he was, as the lyrium addiction finally caught up to him like it had caught up to so many templars, then he would be shipped off to Val Royeaux where he would never be seen or heard from again.

"Haven't you ever wanted to run away from it all?" Anders said the next time they spoke, a couple of days later. The mage sounded tired and worn down, his voice hoarse and scratchy.

"No," he wanted to tell Anders that he couldn't run away even if he wanted to, that every morning found his mind foggy and disoriented until he took his dose of lyrium, but there were vows of silence he had taken that prevented anything more than just a simple denial. "Are you alright? You sound a little sick."

"I'm fine," Anders said, not sounding fine at all. "A little thirsty, maybe."

It was well past midnight, but Cullen went back up the staircase and into the kitchens, gathering up half a loaf of stale bread and some cheese, even some cold chicken left over from dinner and half a pitcher of ale.

"I'll talk to the kitchen staff and see if they can come up with a better meal plan. They can't expect you to live an entire year on gruel," Anders' eyes widened, but he didn't say anything and Cullen was busy pouring the ale into a mug and slicing up the bread. Anders wasn't allowed cutlery, so he brought down a moist towel for his hands as well.

The mage was looking thinner, his ribs visible on his sides under the lean, defined muscles, the lines of his abs disappearing under the blanket he had wrapped around his hips. Anders was built like a rogue, an archer maybe, with wide shoulders. Cullen heard a short huff of laughter, and realised that he was just caught ogling.

Cullen flushed bright red and nearly pushed the tray off his lap, stammering, "you lost weight."

It was more than just the weight; Anders lost some of his glow, his skin was paler and there were dark circles under his eyes. He was quickly growing a beard, and it bothered Cullen that he was looking more and more like he belonged in the dungeons.

"Do you want me to send down a Tranquil to shave you?" Cullen handed the mug of ale over. Anders took it but shook his head no at the suggestion. "I can't give you a razor. It's against the rules."

"No Tranquil. They creep me out," Anders took a sip, then gulped down the rest of it quickly as though afraid that it might be taken away.

"Tranquil are people too," he saw the mage's one eyebrow shooting up. It was a common view for a templar to take, especially since he had no fear of demons possessing them and turning into abominations.

"I don't have anything against them," Anders looked at him levelly, "it's just - that could be my future, you know? That's why they creep me out. They make it sound so peaceful, but there's nothing 'tranquil' about them. They don't even have the freedom to hate whoever took those emotions away. It's awful."

Cullen had taken the time to speak to the Tranquil in the tower when he needed work done, out of an obligation to treat them well and he took advantage of their patience. The Tranquil didn't care that he was uninteresting and boring to talk to, and they never cared if he remembered the punchline to a joke. He had never thought of it as a fate worse than death, like the way Anders went on about it.

But Cullen didn't have to fear tranquility. He feared his own death, distantly, but not as something imminent.

Anders was wolfing down his food, getting a bit of chicken caught in his new beard. He half reached out to pick it off the mage's face, but pulled back just in time. Anders was so intent on his food still and didn't see the gesture. Cullen guessed that he might have laughed at that too, if he did see.

"Well, if you want," Cullen stared at that beard and blurted out, "I can shave you."

His words were out now and he couldn't snatch them back, and the mage was staring at him with such scrutiny that Cullen thought he was the naked one with the blanket draped over him and Anders was decked out head to toe in metal. Then Anders erupted in laughter, wiping at the corners of his eyes at a stray tear.

"I must look like an animal landed on my face for you to even offer that," he didn't know how Anders managed it, but the tension dissipated. Maybe that was what people called charisma, which Anders possessed in spades and no amount of darkness piled on top of him could take it away. He rubbed at his chin, "I guess I do need a shave. Maker, I must look terrible."

Cullen's hand went to his own beard, kept short and neatly trimmed. He grew it in an attempt to look more distinguished, but with his helm no one ever saw it. On Anders, the darker facial hair made the hollows in his cheeks more pronounced and the end of it elongated his face, making him look thinner than he already was. Cullen couldn't bear to look at it.

"I'll bring down a razor and some shaving soap on my next shift," Cullen turned away. "You can change your mind if you get attached to that ... squirrel on your face."

"Thank you, Cullen," and he turned in response to his name in time to see a mischievous half-grin. He muttered a quick 'you're welcome,' as his feet took him out of the room.

A lot of decisions were made while his mouth got ahead of him, or it might have been his heart, he wasn't sure which, but Cullen was sure that his mind had nothing to do with it.

He looked back on this year later on as he stood guard in Kirkwall under the bronze slave statues of the Gallows, where there were more windows and more light in every room but they were all filled with darkness, deeper than any found in a little cell at the bottom of Kinloch Hold.

Anders was like the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whose light in whose darkness? That is the question.


	3. Blood Promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We meet the Orlesian again; Cullen makes a promise to Anders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Noncon, bloodsports. This chapter brings the rating up to Explicit.

He could tell who they were by the sound of their boots. The Orlesian had a drunken gait, hitting the stairs heavier on his heel than the Imp, the young one that followed him wherever he went who had a toe-heel stumble that sounded like two steps in each he took.

The old one liked sharp things and the young one liked to watch. By the third month in the dungeons Anders was conditioned to shake when he heard their reverberating steps down those spiral stairs.

It was hard for him to say whether it was fear or anticipation anymore. As much as they brought discomfort - there was an understatement of an age - they were also something, preferable to the nothing that his days comprised of, to the demon whispers in the dark, close at hand with their promises of light.

_...let me help you deal with them next time they bleed you, mortal..._

"Shut up," Anders put his hands up to his ears, but they weren't physical sounds. The fade was all around and inside him, impossible to block, "go away. I don't need your help."

_...but if you're going to bleed anyway, why not let me make use of it -_

"I said no," he whispered back, certain that they could hear him now on the other side of the door. "I looked you in the eye and said no. Leave me alone."

The whole farce with the rope and the slot and having him bound before they came in was abandoned long ago; they had shown him time and time again that fighting would only bring him more pain. What little control he tried to hold on to, they took one inch at a time until Anders was certain he had none left.

The Orlesian and the Imp were at the door, and he couldn't stop himself as he backed away, his calves hitting the edge of his cot. He fell back sitting hard on the thin mattress, then he plastered himself against the wall in a futile attempt to get as far away as possible.

After the door opened they were on him in seconds. No matter how hard he fought, his bare knuckles could not fight metal, and he always ended up strung by the manacles, with his arms above him and his back against the wall.

The Orlesian would then produce his chosen toys of the day, usually something sharp. He'd light the sconces, both heating up the room to make the pain more marked for Anders and for the templar to better see what he was doing. Then came the worst part.

Those people who insisted that waiting was the worst part had never met the Orlesian. The first thing that came out of his crate of tricks today was a leather-bit gag, and not being able to speak, not even to scream or cry out in pain, was high on the list of things Anders hated.

With a wave of his hand, he sent the imp outside to 'keep watch' and Anders knew that keeping watch was secondary to getting the kid out of the way so the older man could indulge in his strange hobby.

He fought as the bit was forced inside his mouth and the buckle looped into place behind his head. The armoured man held Anders still by his chin, "I rather like the screams, actually, but I don't want you to bite your tongue off. That would be hard to explain to the commander."

If he hadn't known already that this one had no heart to soften and what pleased him most was simply more pain, Anders would have begged.

Anders recognized the implements from his time in the healing room, and they were basic things that a templar who trained in field medicine would have been expected to carry, so that even if the Orlesian was caught carrying them, no one would have been able to accuse him of anything.

The templar dropped to his knees in front of him, pulling his gauntlets off. His skin was pale and sickly, long fingers thin as talons, and with one hand he reached out and cupped Anders' sac, thumb brushing alongside the flaccid cock in an attempt to bring it to life.

Anders whimpered behind the leather bit, unable to stop his body from responding to that cold clammy touch, each stroke filling the organ until it was pointing straight and proud between his legs.

The Orlesian chuckled behind his helm, pinching the skin of the tip of his cock just beneath the head with one hand, while with the other he pushed a suture needle through the thin skin of the frenulum, the end of the curved needle pushing out the other side.

The world narrowed down to a single point of naked pain and Anders nearly collapsed but for the manacles above him and the wall behind him. He heard a scream, high-pitched and desperate, and only distantly did he recognize it to be his own.

 _Stop. Please stop,_ his words were muffled by the gag but he tried anyway, knowing that his pleading was futile but the pain urged him to do something to stop the torment. _I'll do anything. Just stop._

"Oh, but we've only just started," said the templar, working along the underside of the half-hard cock in his hand, decorating it in a line of hooks. "It's nice that you can scream right through the gag, though. I was a little worried that nothing would get through."

Tears streamed freely down his cheeks, a ticklish sensation that traveled down his chin where he had an urge to scratch at it. Anders tried to distract himself by focusing on that instead, and the roughness of stone against his back and the pain in his wrists where the iron dug into them, but the sharp flares along his cock was impossible to ignore, each invasive entrance of the needle worse than the lash of a hooked flogger.

Neither could he brush off the fact that his cock was fully hard as the last needle slid in, near the base where it joined his balls. The eye of each needle was threaded through with hooks, attached to little silver bells. He'd seen those before too, in the supply room for the Tranquil, a decoration for belts. The cold hand holding him stroked over the top side of his cock, where the needles weren't, and it twitched upwards chiming its approval.

"Now who's a sick bastard, huh? You love it," the templar was standing up in front of him now, Anders having lost track of the hows, left only with the certainties, the end results and not the in-betweens.

He was certain that he didn't want it, this was forced upon him, the core of him hard as steel fighting against the urge to thrust against the hand holding him, spreading precome in a circular pattern over the tip of his cock.

When the templar moved his hand away, Anders cursed himself for the whine that escaped his gag. Hands were at his nipples, pinching them, and his cock chimed as if it was welcomed attention, not caring that whatever the man had in mind it probably involved more pain.

"How about here?" Thumbs stroked across the soft points of his nipples, making them stand out along the gooseflesh on his chest. He watched in morbid fascination as the Orlesian hooked a suture needle through the side of a nipple, as steady as his own hands when he put it to use sewing a wound shut, the pointed end emerging from the other side.

Anders sobbed openly behind his gag, breaths coming out in short, laboured huffs in an effort to keep still as another needle pierced him, giving him a matched set. There was no bleeding yet, the needles plugging up the places that bled. Blood rushed to the areas he was pierced in an effort to heal him regardless, succeeding only in making the points more sensitive.

Fingernails scratched down his chest from the collarbone down, and he knew it was coming, knew that it was going to hurt a lot more than it looked, but when it scratched across his nipple he still couldn't stop the keening scream that fled his throat. There was a few seconds where he blacked out entirely, waking to the feeling of blood in his mouth as he was slapped awake. Then the pain hit him anew as the Orlesian clamped clothespins on the hard nubs, accentuating the invasion of metal in his skin.

He was hoarse from screaming, but all his whines over the pain had become one long wail that he couldn't stop. The templar leaned close, one hand pushing Anders against the wall by his shoulder and another pulling up his skirt, and Anders thought that maybe he'd just be raped, which was at least normal and familiar and he could imagine it was someone else. But the Orlesian only took his own cock in hand, wrapped his fingers around himself and stroked.

The whining sounds coming from him wishing he was the one being touched was worse than the pain itself, the recognition that he wanted to be touched so badly that it hardly mattered who it was, or how he was handled; he was so unbearably close that he wished he could come and let his mind fall into oblivion.

That hand on his shoulder moved down and wiggled the needle in one nipple, and he could feel hot blood running down over his skin, cooling on his sweat that glistened in the light of the sconces. _Delicious ... let us help you ... kill him ...._

Still he said no, shaking his head emphatically in case his words weren't enough, it wasn't worth it. This pain was transitory and temporary, it came and went as his mind retreated and a cackle of endless laughter emerged from behind his leather bit. Beside his ear the breathing was getting heavier and the sound of the templar's hand on his own cock, wet and slick, echoed off the hard walls.

He felt moist heat as the man pulsed and came, spurting on Anders' naked thighs, and he thought _finally_ it was done, at least what he was used for was over, the man would take the damned things out and leave him to his misery. But when those fingers crept past his balls and nudged at his entrance, he knew it was not to be.

"Oh don't worry. I'm not going to fuck a dirty mage," the Orlesian pulled away his fingers and took out the bottle of firewater from the same kit where he kept his needles. He poured a little of it over his hand, the alcohol mingling with his seed.

Then the hand was back, and when it touched that sensitive pucker it stung like salt on a wound. Fingers that burned as branding irons slipped inside of him, the templar hooking them towards himself, seeking.

The sounds that came out of Anders now wasn't pained, they were moans, muffled but audible. Anders cried in the shame of the aftermath of those groans, the Orlesian's mocking laughter beneath him coaxing out more tears and casting the flames in halos.

Each nudge to his sweet spot was accompanied by a sharp blinding pain, as the Orlesian pulled each needle back out, blood gushing in steady, small streams as they rushed to the pinprick wounds. When the last one was drawn away, the one lodge in the most sensitive place beneath the head of his cock, Anders came hard, the edges of his vision going black and a shock of pain pleasure rippled through his limbs. White ropes of cum landed in the stone beneath his feet, joining with the blood already collected there.

His hips were being pushed into the wall as the digits inside him worked a few more times before pulling out, hand wrapping around his erection once more to coat it in blood.

He barely noticed as the clothespins were removed, nor did he feel the needles drawn out of his nipples. There was a blank in his memory here, his mind high on the pain, laughing amidst the tears, and he was lowered to the ground. Even when alcohol was poured over him, ostensibly to disinfect his many wounds, yet another layer of pain that burned into the cuts, he didn't hear his own screams, though they were reflexive and unstoppable.

When he came to, Cullen was by his side, rocking him as he gibbered incoherently, his body overtaken by uncontrollable shaking. Cullen's gauntleted fingers combing through his wet hair; Anders sobbing against his armoured chest, laying his cheek on a relief of the sword of mercy.

"You shouldn't sleep on the floor," Cullen said softly. "That's probably how you got sick last time."

One quick glance downwards confirmed that there was no evidence of the assault; a quick wipe of elfroot potion would have taken care of the tiny wounds. A bucket of cold water took care of the rest, whatever blood or semen still on him running down into the hole in the floor he used as a privy.

Even if he told Cullen, the innocent boy templar would probably tell him it was all in his head, the paranoia growing stronger over the months, or just a nightmare. Anders himself wasn't quite sure it wasn't, but it was so vivid he could still hear the Orlesian's heavy breathing in his ears.

Against his better judgement, if he had any left, Anders pulled the templar down by his chest plate and kissed him. Cullen drew back immediately, pushing the mage off of him and down on the bed, turning his head and averting his eyes from Anders' nakedness.

"Please," if Karl was here, he would take Anders into his arms, kissing his temples and the mage would have proceeded to overwrite all his bad memories with mindless pleasure. But he didn't have Karl. He had Cullen, "don't go."

"I can't do that," the hands gripping his gauntlet held on to him so tight the knuckles turned white. Anders' eyes were full of pain and he was - lost; Cullen couldn't stand it. "It isn't right."

"I've seen the way you look at me sometimes," after all, wasn't that why Cullen was so nice? There was only one thing he could have wanted from Anders. That was easier to contemplate than other, messier alternatives where black became white.

This room had taken away all he had, stripped Anders down to nothing from the outside in. He did not need his beliefs taken from him as well.

"It doesn't - I don't -" Cullen was notoriously bad at lying, and try as he might he couldn't deny that he was interested, but he had been interested in other people before and never crossed that line. A combination of fear of rejection and plain shyness on his part paralyzed him even now.

But there was no chance of rejection here. The mage had taken the initiative and climbed into Cullen's lap as he stumbled over his words, one hand reaching beneath him to find the evidence of his arousal. Anders smiled, mouth descending back on his, swallowing a moan from the templar as he stroked him through the heavy skirt.

No one ever touched him like this before, not the arm that clung to him desperately or the mouth that devoured, drawing his tongue out of him, and before long, before he could even think to push the mage away, he was clutching at the man straddling him and crying out in ecstasy as Anders' skillful hand brought him over the edge. He felt hot shame hit him like a wall before his seed even cooled, a bitter taste in the back of his throat that no sweet kisses could wash away.

Anders still hadn't moved, nor had he touched himself to relieve the erection Cullen could feel hard against his thigh. He buried his face into Cullen's neck and he still had one arm firmly wrapped around him, but the intermittent shaking that Cullen found him in had stopped.

"I'm ..." _sorry_ sounded like the wrong thing to say, but he had crossed that boundary he told himself the wasn't ever going to cross, and there was no turning back.

Cullen was angry, suddenly, all those years of keeping his vows seemed a waste, and not at Anders, not at this moment they shared. He was mad at the world that brought him to this point in time, where all touch was denied him until Anders, a mage of all people, gave it to him.

Anders silenced him again with his lips, mercifully taking away his choice to speak as he had nothing of substance to say other than platitudes and regurgitated words. The mage's slim fingers moved over his gauntlets, and finding the catches that held them to his wrists, slid them off.

His hand was guided down between Anders' legs, and when they finally made contact, skin on skin, Anders moaned, moving away so that Cullen could see him. Anders' eyes closed in pleasure and the sounds he was making was addictive, each little huff of breath and slanted syllable calling out the Maker was sweet with want. His voice was rough, as though he had spent hours screaming at the walls in his cell.

All the while Anders' hand was still on his, urging him to speed up here and add pressure there, showing Cullen exactly how he liked to be touched.

"Cullen - yes. Faster," and as he obliged, the mage tucked himself into the crook of Cullen's neck, biting into the muscles where his neck and shoulder joined and muffled his cries. It didn't sound like a call to the Maker and it was something like a name, but not his, not Cullen's.

He felt dirty, suddenly, the stickiness in his smalls reminding him of his own shame and the dinginess of the cell around him echoed that feeling. Cullen wasn't supposed to be in here, or touch a mage inappropriately, or feel this heat in his chest that he didn't even feel when he looked at Amell, the girl with the sparkling eyes and the taunting sway in her hips with whom he thought he was in love with.

Cullen looked into the mage's eyes and knew that his own held nothing but horror at what he had done, and Anders studied him, warm gaze turning cold as he misinterpreted what Cullen saw in him as disgust.

He'd only just wanted to feel normal again, just skin and heat and no pain, bodies and normal reactions to pleasure and not needles and knives. Anders wanted to shake away that creeping feeling of blood running down his legs. He climbed off the templar and threw the covers over himself, seeing nothing but abhorrence in the templar's gaze.

"I'm sorry," Cullen said quietly, wiping his hand on the burlap sheet and buckling his gauntlets back on without another word.

He was almost to the door again when the mage finally spoke up, his velvety timbre nearly overtaken with gravel, "don't go."

"I'll just be outside," he needed to think, and Anders had this uncanny ability to cloud his thinking.

"Ser Cullen."

The acknowledgement of his title made him turn, and the mage who stared back at him was barely recognizable as Anders, that mouthy antagonistic proud man they dragged in here months ago. He still glowed, as bright and determined as ever in the set of his jaw and his unwavering gaze, but there was something else there too now, a simmering anger in the furrow of his brow.

Cullen realized that he was looking at a true survivor. The more the walls came down, the more they tried to cut him down to size, the brighter he shone, clutching at whatever fate was willing to throw his way in order to hold on to sanity, to carry him through the dark until he had a chance to see the sun again.

He was beginning to understand what made him want to come down here, taking on extra watches to be near him. All the traits that Cullen didn't have and all the things that he wasn't, Anders possessed in plenty.

"Anders, we're not - we're not allowed to -" he stammered, but instead of too many words he had too little again, as was always the case when he found himself facing the mage.

"Sod the rules," Anders climbed off the bed and closed the little distance between them, "the moment you realize that the world is full of people who are free and allowed to do what you're not, then that's when you know you're a slave. We're both slaves."

He had it down so simply, with such intrinsic reasoning, that Cullen was rendered speechless. Was that why he came to see Anders - because he stood in a corridor day after day mad with want, smothered by a helm that might as well had been a gag, his gauntlets chains and his boots fetters?

But there was nothing right about this, the lustful gaze he ran over Anders' body while he stood in this tiny room with no escape. If there were choices, he wouldn't have chosen Cullen. He was nothing and no one; he knew that well enough. Anders only wanted him because he had no other choice, and sex without choice was -

"I know what you're thinking. And I don't care," Anders pulled him closer, and though Cullen was tall, the blond man was taller when he stood straight. "I need you to keep coming back for me. Will you?"

His hands were warm on Cullen's cheeks, and those lips, lower one jutting out slightly in a perpetual pout, were heated and electrified as they came to claim him, burning away his resolve.

It was only a single word, but it was both heavy and light at once, a promise that bound them as strongly as blood, and when he said it, the weight of his armour melted away.

"Yes."


	4. Disillusionment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders shows Cullen the meaning of his words; Solona makes a proposition.

Cullen was beginning to think of the cell as their cell. It was ironic, that in that little room where incarcerated mages were kept over generations, he felt his invisible shackles fall away.

Everywhere else he went, all along the tower, he was caged. With Anders, he was free.

The armour came off over the weeks; at first, he was too afraid of discovery to take more than his gauntlets off, but as time went by it became more and more obvious that Anders was forgotten down here by all but the mages, who still talked about him in conspiratory tones.

The actualization of what Anders had said at the very first was hard to take - it was true, every word. They were using his punishment as a deterrent for the other mages. There had been no escape attempts at all since Anders was sent to rot down here.

The watch changed every eight hours, and his relief was always late and never early. Cullen still had the skirt wrapped around his waist most of the time, though for what reason even he was not certain. It was either a last line of modesty or a symbol of what he was, or perhaps it was neither of those things, just a reminder that he didn't belong down here, that near the end of his shift he had to buckle his armour back on with Anders sitting at the corner of his cot silently watching.

He never looked back after he strapped on his armour. Cullen wasn't even sure what expression he was wearing anymore, facing away. His steps grew heavy and the metal weighed even more than it usually did as the door closed behind him, his chest tightened over the light in the corridor, flames instead of lyrium glow, imagining the colour of Anders' hair out here instead of in there, where the world was colourless.

Some days, he opened the door and Anders was on him before he could pull off his gauntlets. The mage gave him no room for pleasantries and the words he said out of politeness, hands slipping under his pauldrons to get at the catches while Cullen stripped off his gauntlets and faulds.

His armour was a pile on the floor and he barely had the time to rummage for his belt and a vial of oil before Anders all but dragged him to the cot, hands scrabbling at his biceps and legs hooked over his lower back, urging him closer, batting his hands away when Cullen tried to prepare him, and even that last bastion of modesty of his templar skirt ended up pooled around his ankles and a cursory once over with oil, slick over his cock, before pushing in, Anders, tight and hot and wonderful, a wail of pleasure that he no longer hid as Cullen hit home.

He waited for Anders to adjust, wishing that he could be gentle, but at times when he was so hungry for Cullen, there was no room for tenderness.

"More," he pushed his ankles into Cullen's back, while his hands held on tightly to those broad shoulders, pulling him closer, using him as leverage as he arched his back, changing the angle in which they joined. "Move. Fuck yes - faster."

And he let the mage lead, setting exactly the pace he wanted - brutal - and the pressure he craved - hard - as he got lost in Anders' lustful, wanton expression, all his faculties for thinking collapsed over his measured thrusts, his worries and guilt and shame forgotten in the moment by moment feverish coupling they shared.

He knew that Anders was close, the clenching around his cock was unmistakable. Cullen slipped the hand he had over the mage's shoulder up to his cheek, thumb stroking at the corner of his closed eyes and slowing his thrusts enough for Anders to look at him. Only when he was sure that Anders was here, eyes feverish but clear and present meeting his, did he speed up again, one hand wrapping around the neglected erection to bring him over the edge.

"Cullen!" It came out as a plea and a litany, repeated even while Anders' eyes clamped shut again as he spurted over the hand wrapped over his cock, Cullen keeping up his thrusts through the shudders and sighs, each little sound of ecstasy coaxed out of the mage brought a rush of elation. For those scant few moments he was the center of Anders' entire world.

Anders pulled him down after the last of the aftershocks subsided, for an open-mouthed kiss that both burned and shocked him each time their lips met still, the touch sending a tingle to his scalp and weakness to his knees. Cullen moaned into the kiss, moving his hips for that last few times before he too, cried out, the mage beneath him drinking in those whimpers as he came.

He rolled them over afterwards, pulling the mage to rest on top of him, the cot barely holding both of them. It was a strange kind of freedom they had, and if he closed his eyes he could imagine that they were elsewhere, far away, no stone walls pressing in and no tower over their heads, just two people -

\- there it was again, the constriction in his chest and the pain that spread from the center outwards. He could feel Anders' stubble scraping along his chest as he turned, nestling into his collarbone. Cullen's arm tightened over Anders' back, other hand coming up to card through his hair. It was moist, cold on his skin, and it occurred to him that someone else was in here earlier cleaning the - his - mage.

Cullen bit into his lower lip, his mind conjuring up images of Anders, here in this room with someone else, another templar bent over him and touching him, armour discarded on the floor in their haste.

"Ow," Anders said under his breath, lifting his head.

He only just realized then that the hand he had in Anders' hair had become a fist. Cullen relaxed his fingers, disentangling himself, "sorry."

Anders offered a playful smile, "what's the matter? Bad day at work?"

"No, I," _have no idea what is wrong with me._ The words caught in his throat. He had so much already from Anders, this new found freedom, the pleasure and the attention most of all, and still he wanted more. "I guess it's always a bad day. At work."

"Tell me."

His beard was growing in again; Anders had the kind of facial hair that shadowed his face within hours after a shave, accentuating his pointy chin and that roguish smile. That he could smile still was a feat all its own. Cullen quickly learned that it was impossible to say no to the lopsided grin accompanied by the crinkle at the corners of those amber eyes.

Bit by bit Anders drew Cullen out of his shell. Even if he had nothing interesting to talk about, he passed along gossip he picked up, news from the outside, Carroll's latest shenanigans - left a rune of fire on the Knight Commander's favourite chair, Irving had to run in and put it out with an ice spell - and whatever else he could think of.

Somewhere along the way he had lost his stammer.

It was Solona's harrowing tomorrow, and he wasn't allowed to tell Anders that, but there was no way for him to warn her, so Cullen told him anyway, grinning a little at the very minor broken rule. When he found out that the commander had chosen Cullen to strike the death blow if the worst should come to pass, he felt hollowed out and filled with lead and he could have very well dropped through the stone floor into the dungeons right then and there.

Anders was right about that as well, from the very beginning of their entanglement. _You cannot become attached to me. It will kill me if they use us against each other._

Cullen's own little crush on Solona was no secret; gossip was like currency in a community such as theirs and his was traded and traded again until the rumour was worth nothing. That they would test him this way, to see if his 'love' would make him refuse the post and perhaps show his weakness, was proof enough that it wasn't only mages they needed to control.

"Show them nothing. Walk right by her in the hallways," Cullen could feel Anders' breath ghosting along his chest. Then a puff of air as he laughed, a ringing sound lined with the aftermath of sex, fuzzy at the edges, "and if she comes on to you, for the love of the Maker don't say no."

"Why would she - me?" His last syllable came out as an unmanly squeak, and Anders broke into a string of giggles.

"She may die tomorrow. The least you can do is put out."

That did not answer his question at all, but he knew better than to press; if Anders chose to deflect, confronting him just led them around in a loop until Cullen felt stupid for ever trying.

He hadn't thought about Solona for quite a while. She no longer haunted his dreams the way she used to, robes clinging to her hips as she sashayed her way through the halls and disappearing behind the curve of a wall with a beckoning, backward glance. Lately he fell exhausted into bed with the kind of languor that brought dreamless sleep, and if he dreamt at all he did not remember them upon waking.

Anders had his eyes closed and his breathing was even and calm. It was a rare moment of peace where Cullen was allowed to study him without the mage fidgeting constantly, never still, filled with nervous energy. He was beautiful, hair a dark silver in their rune light, long elegant fingers draped over Cullen's chest.

He stroked through the damp hair. Anders was asleep, his touch eliciting a soft snore. Gently, he ran his fingertips over Anders with exploratory touches, over his shoulders and his back where Cullen could feel each of his ribs jutting out. He was getting too thin, even with what extra food Cullen managed to sneak down here.

Tentatively he reached out and tipped up Anders' chin, leaning down to plant a kiss on his temple. A smile spread over his sleeping face, contented and cat-like, then his mouth opened and he whispered, "Karl."

It shouldn't have hurt as much as it did, that Anders was elsewhere in his mind with someone else, Cullen a poor substitute for a mage that he had actual feelings for, not this business-like exchange of pleasure in a dank dungeon for want of choice. That Karl wasn't the only one was no comfort at all; the moment Anders was allowed out of this cell, he'd never even look at Cullen again.

That was a sobering realization, that Anders needed him much less than he needed Anders. While Anders' stay in solitary was temporary, Cullen's position as a templar was permanent, the unending watches he took on staring into nothing waiting for the worst to happen was a life sentence. Anders would be free to pursue others with his wit and magnetism the moment he stepped out of his room.

Cullen was appealing to him now because he was the only option.

"Why would Solona want me?" He asked later, as Anders stretched and blinked the sleep out of his eyes. They both knew what he was asking, not Solona - sod Solona - but what exactly Anders saw in Cullen. "I'm boring."

Anders crawled up his chest, the skin of his abdomen slid between them slick with sweat and seed, and when he moved the air filled once more with the scent of musk. He wore a faint smile, as if he was amused by the question, "you're not boring, Cullen. You're a rarity. One of the world's last true innocents."

He read 'naive' in that as well, but he'd take it, if it signified that the feverish kiss bestowed on him now, hot and claiming, was meant for him. Anders rolled his hips against him, awakening his desires.

His mage, straddling his lap teasing him with possibilities. Anders reached under him to take Cullen's growing erection in hand, "do you want me again?"

Once wasn't enough. Twice only made him want more, and each of the watches he took down in solitary left him empty, the ache in his bones worse than the day after spending it all in a training yard. Still he wanted more, but not just Anders' body, willingly given only because he was a prisoner. He wanted assurances, even if they were only lies.

He wanted exactly what Anders told him he wasn't able to give.

"If I ... become attached to you," some words, once spoken aloud, could not be taken back. Anders simply chose to ignore their existence, "then the next time I manage to get away, and I will, you will be the first hunter they send after me. Unless ..."

Cullen waited for his next words, but they never came, turning into kisses on his knuckles, his arms wrapped around the mage spooning into their narrow little cot, "unless what?"

"Never mind," then Anders turned round to face him and there were kisses along his jaw and an insistent mouth nibbling on his earlobe, and the unease he felt was chased away.

Their meetings made the long hours standing in a hallway, or anything else for that matter, more tolerable. He replayed their conversations and thought of all the things he should have said. There was a phrase for it in Orlesian that he could not remember now, where one thought of all the witty things and the meaningful things one could have said, but did not.

Solona Amell passed her harrowing in the morning with flying colours; no surprise there. She was gone for less than an hour. That made hers the fastest harrowing in tower history. Cullen was glad that she awoke with no demon speaking through her. Even though he did not find himself particularly enamored with her anymore, he was in no hurry to kill his first mage.

He wished that he never had to, though that probably meant a lifetime of guarding corridors without promotion.

"Hello, Ser Cullen," she sounded so young and girlish it was hard to think of her as anything but another apprentice, but she had earned her title, full-fledged mage now with all its privileges.

"Amell. Congratulations on passing your harrowing," he smiled, and the girl looked at him quizzically. "Is there something on my face?"

"You used to stutter. Oh dear, that's awfully rude, isn't it. I mean, thank you," she grinned all the way to her light blue eyes.

Blue like the sky that Anders hadn't seen for months. When was the last time Cullen had seen the sky, to be able to compare someone's eyes to it? For that matter, when had he started to relate everything he saw and heard to the blond mage?

"You're very welcome," he said to her. Perfunctory words. He had performed his duty and watched over her harrowing. They could not suspect more of him.

"Now that I'm all grown up," and she was bouncing on her heels, not like a grown-up at all, "do you want to read a book with me to celebrate?"

Well, that was cryptic, "uh ... I'm not sure if I get what you're saying."

"We can go somewhere quiet like that storeroom over there, and you can show me a book," she was still bouncing on her heels, looking nervous as though this took all her courage. Solona tipped her head to one side and blinked at him rapidly, "and then we can read it?"

She looked so bright and hopeful and just plain cute that he almost laughed. _Oh for the love of the Maker don't turn her down._ He had dreamt of this, long ago, sweet Solona and her big blue eyes asking him to - read a book.

He nodded his assent. It wasn't every day that he was propositioned by the girl of his dreams, and if this happened weeks ago, he might have ran away and let the chance go by. Solona giggled, and she positively skipped into the storeroom.

"It's all about the memories you make," Anders said to him once, on a quiet evening as they moved slowly, spending hours just kissing and touching and exploring each other. "Fill your life with new experiences. It makes the long hours in the dark easier."

Cullen waited a few minutes before ducking through the door. She flung her arms around him straight away, lips pressing on his tasting of apples and cinnamon. He wondered if all mages were likes this, taking advantage of whatever privacy they could manage, not caring for deeper feelings or promises, just the here and now creating enough memories to relish later.

She was pressing him against a wall and pulling at his gauntlets, mouth never leaving his, hands expertly sneaking under his pauldrons at the catches, and it was obvious that she had dealt with the same armour before. He had known, somewhere over the past few months, that Solona wasn't exactly the saintly beauty he pictured on a pedestal. Cullen pushed her hands away, setting his gauntlets aside, keeping the rest on.

"Don't worry about anything. I'm on silphium tea," she whispered as he loosened the cords on her corset and mouthed at her neck. She led him towards a crate, bending over on a sack of flour as she pulled her skirts up.

The Solona Amell that he loved never was.

He could taste the falsehood of it, in the sweetness of apples in her mouth and the vanilla oil she wore, a dab behind her ear and another between her breasts, a slip of it behind each of her knees. She bit at the sleeve of her new mage robes as he held her hips and drove into her, glancing behind her when he hit a spot inside that made her writhe, surprised perhaps by his practiced, unceasing thrusts.

She led and he followed, matching her movements with his own. Before long she cried out, muffled by her sleeve, eyes closing in bliss, and he sped up, clenching his eyes shut and picturing Anders beneath him instead as he came inside of her.

Afterwards, he buckled his gauntlets back on himself, refusing her offer to help. They were the only part of his armour he had removed. Cullen leaned back on the wall and smiled at Solona as she fixed her hair to an approximation of presentably messy, the waves of her raven black strands draping over her shoulders.

"That was fun," she stood in front of him, bouncing a bit on her heels again. Her chin was tipped sideways and in the darker storeroom lit only by one candle, her eyes were dark, the points of her pupils surrounded by a ring of royal blue. "We should do it again some other time."

A quick kiss as she pulled herself up by his breastplate, lips pressing on his, closed mouth with a tight smile. There was no thrill of electricity to her nor was there the blind passion he felt should have been in a kiss, and if he had any doubt before, he had none now.

There was no love here, not even passion or even compatibility. Just a quick tryst in a dark room between strangers who knew each other not at all.

"I don't think that's such a good idea," he said to her back, as she was just about to open the door to rejoin their little population of mages, a songbird perfectly suited to this life, destined to rise through the ranks to win a kind of freedom one day.

She turned with a wistful smile, either expecting those words or the sentiment without the words, that they would thereafter pass one another in the halls as if they never exchanged more than a passing hello, "no, I guess not."

Later, Anders pulled a long black hair out of the gap between his gorget and his breastplate. Cullen blushed furiously, secretly wishing for an outward sign of jealousy or even a snide comment to show that maybe he too was taken by the same madness that possessed Cullen when they kissed.

"Is she still putting vanilla oil everywhere?" And Cullen felt the world open beneath him, a chasm wide and bottomless, swallowing him up.

Anders' hands went to the catches under his pauldrons, and he let this mage peel the metal off of him in layers, revealing the man beneath that he had not wanted to show Solona. "She read that in some Orlesian novel and she's convinced that men love the smell of apples and vanilla. I don't think it works, personally. I think she's mixing up hungry and horny."

Cullen laughed, a brittle sound that made him wince. Anders ignored the undertones of heartbreak, perhaps misunderstanding for whom his heart broke. He nuzzled into the mage's neck, feeling like the smaller one though he was only taller, Cullen both broader and heavier and could pick up Anders with one arm. He said hopefully, "is it all right if I just hold you, tonight?"

"You know I'm just happy that you're here," Anders spoke as one who was familiar with disillusionment, dulcet tones luring him along with welcoming arms to the cot. "We can do whatever you want. So if that's what you want, come here."

For one night their positions were reversed; Cullen laid his head on Anders' shoulder, and he must have been heavy, his unruly curls tickling at Anders' chin and the cot too small for them to lie side by side comfortably. But Anders never complained, one hand stroking through his hair, an occasional kiss pressed to his forehead alerting him that he was still awake.

Cullen's first home was an orphanage, high on discipline and low on affection. Then came the training hall and the promise of adventure, grueling days always ending by dropping into bed at the end of them in exhaustion. There was a constant threat of the switch or the paddle, a punishing run in the yard or banishment from the order for breaking minor rules.

He had been so careful, all his life toeing the line more so than any of the mages in the tower. Now that he looked back on it he couldn't see that he lived at all.

Another four months and Anders was free, or at least free to wander the halls, a bigger jail and fellow prisoners to talk to. It was a selfish thing, that he wished they could stay down here forever, Anders always here for him with his open arms.

It was hard to imagine going back to the way he was, with nothing to look forward to until the day came when he wouldn't remember his own name, or Anders', or that once he had spent half a year in the arms of a runaway, defiant mage, with dark gold hair and a lopsided grin, kisses that felt like electricity and a touch that reminded him that he was a man and not made of stone.

This was borrowed time, affection borne of necessity, tainted, sweet kisses in exchange for company. Cullen could have been anyone else, preferably someone else named Karl, and as that name rose to the surface of his meandering mind, he thought of all the ways that he could keep Anders to himself.

Only months later he would look back and see that any actions he took was in vain, that what they had reflected what they were. He was a templar shackled by an addiction and Anders was a free spirit, who could never freely consent to be his.

His desire to possess, as the demons he fought so hard against, burned whatever time they had left together to ashes.


	5. Trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders is conflicted; the Orlesian speaks.

Waking was the most difficult part of his day.

The tranquil lit the torches in the apprentice quarters just before dawn, filling the rooms with light to signal a change from night to day. All the windows had been sealed up long ago, when the chantry took Kinloch Hold and turned it into the Ferelden circle. Still, days were filled with lessons and nights were filled with dreamless sleep, the stone walls in the dormitories lined with runes that sealed off the fade and prevented spellcasting or the possibility of demon possession.

Anders found himself confused at the moment of waking, and the bed he woke on could have been the bunk in the apprentice quarters or the bigger, more comfortable one he had in his own room, or damp grass and the slight shiver that came with waking covered in drops of dew, even the rose water scented silk sheets at the Pearl in Denerim. Then Anders would shake his head and be back here, on an old cot with a thin mattress down in the dungeons of a tower he had been trying to run away from all his life, and the weight of all that stone seemed to hit him all at once.

Mornings, evenings, days - it did not matter what time of day it was, though he wished he knew. He hated waking.

Cullen took evening watches, always a little tired but not yet enough to fall asleep, and bringing in leftovers from what the circle usually served for lunch. He never asked what time it was, afraid that the templar might lie to him, breaking their fragile trust.

He used to be good at this, once. He was a master of keeping the delicate balance of sharing bodily pleasures and maintaining emotional distance. Karl taught him that attachment was death for a mage, love the ultimate trap and whatever affection he held, even friendships, needed to be strictly contained. Never be willing to die for anyone. It made for selfish, lonely lives, but that was a mage's lot.

It was easier when there were other people. When he was younger and found himself developing feelings for Karl - and it was so easily done, Karl was his first and that was always tricky business - he simply spread the love around by sleeping with as many people as he could get his hands on.

Down here, there was only Cullen. At first he found the attention stifling, though his templar was sweet and handsome enough, Anders wasn't one for romance. Sometimes he dozed and woke to find the templar studying his face when his eyes opened, and he touched Anders so reverently, with such sincerity, that he couldn't help the affection that sat like lead in his chest.

Anders had to constantly tell himself that Cullen was a templar, the enemy, and would not hesitate to kill him if he was a hunter sent out after Anders on his next escape.

He told Cullen so, but he doubted he actually listened. It was already too late for both of them probably, regardless of what he had in mind of wants and wishes. Anders had been down here for so long already that the faces of his friends were indistinct; he thought only of Cullen when he was alone.

"If I ... become attached to you," he said to the templar once, as they lain snug against one another. "Then the next time I manage to get away, and I will, you will be the first hunter they send out for me. Unless," _you come with me._

Thank the Maker he caught himself. He kissed Cullen's hands that were wrapped around him, and tried to think of other people, other faces, other lovers in the dark less dangerous than this one because he hadn't cared.

Once said, some words could not be taken back, and some dreams could never come true so there was no point in dreaming.

Anders had never allowed himself to fall in love, and it was true as long as he told himself he hadn't. He only needed Cullen to come back whenever he could, so Anders was never left in the dark talking to the walls for too long.

It had been dark for days now and he had a feeling that something was wrong, but there was no one to ask, no voices through the door. It was alarming that he even missed the Orlesian.

Pain and pleasure, hate and love, served the same purpose. Their opposite was apathy, the tedium of time passing one second at a time in a stream of single grains of sand through the hourglass with nothing at all to break the ennui.

Sound of boots rang through the hall, drunken steps, a little more unsure than usual, and only one templar. Anders couldn't make out the Imp. The Orlesian was alone.

 _When the Maker wishes to punish us he answers our prayers._ Anders rolled his eyes. he couldn't even think _it's too quiet_ or _it's been days since I was last tortured_ without something bad happening the moment the phrases popped into his head.

Anders didn't even flinch, now, and in the dark since he had nothing to do but reflect, he knew that he welcomed the attention, even trusted him a little. He knew what to expect from the Orlesian, which was more than he could say about Cullen. Hate between a templar and a mage was predictable, even permissible, and having his beliefs confirmed kept him sane in the way that his sweet gentle templar could never manage.

The Orlesian wielded his scalpel and his needles with a steady hand; he hadn't even nicked an artery once. Anders could trust him to inflict pain, enough to wish for death sometimes moments and death for all templars in others. He always carefully wiped Anders down with a healing potion afterwards, soothing away any cuts or scrapes and returning him to the shelf like a precious toy.

With the Orlesian, Anders remembered to hate, each touch of the blade was a reminder that templars were the enemy.

He pressed the tip of his scalpel just hard enough to scrape at the skin of Anders' neck, where a love bite was invisible in the darkness but showed up as a light bruise under torch light.

"I see someone else hasn't been discreet. It's that young one who doesn't wear a helm, I bet." He made a sound of sucking his teeth in disapproval.

He drew a line on Anders' stomach, blade stuttering between cutting into the skin, leaving a welt that seeped blood.

If his torment was not broken up by pleasure he was strong enough to bear it for a week or two, perhaps, but definitely not for months. Madness was always close at hand with demon promises of power enough to kill every single last templar in the tower. Anders wasn't a killer, but someone here was very good at inspiring rage.

If he was to go mad he didn't want Cullen to become collateral damage. Anders could never forgive himself.

"Talk to me."

Another line, this time dotting over one hard pebble of a nipple. Anders clenched his jaw and felt his tears hot on his cheeks but did not say a word.

"You're protecting him," the templar cackled, and there was real mirth in it, not the taunting Anders was used to hearing. Startled, he looked up meeting still the silver helm that he had never taken off here, "you think he's your friend, do you? Your very own templar fuck-buddy? Oh, that is rich. Cullen isn't your friend, little mage. I am."

Anders had begun to think of even this as preferable to the darkness now, but definitely not to Cullen, the man who brought him news and food and gave him some semblance of normality amidst the fear. He glared daggers at the Orlesian, not hiding his anger but too scared to hurl insults.

Sometime between the beginning of his imprisonment and Cullen losing his stammer, Anders stopped talking back. Maybe Cullen was his act of defiance, a little secret he kept from them all. Or maybe his smart mouth actually got smart and realized that talking back gained him nothing but pain.

"You are not my friend," Anders said. The Orlesian had a way of taking Anders' words and haunting him with them later. That was as much as he dared.

The templar snorted and laughed through his nose, "I gave you a way out. There's a knife hidden under your cot, and you and I are the only ones who know it's there."

"I'll never resort to blood magic," once the demons found a way in they would never leave him alone. As it was the blood shed without his consent surrounded him with constant whispers. "It's not worth it."

The hand touching his cheek would have been tender if not for the scalpel held dangerously close to his eyebrow, "living isn't worth it, boy."

The man sounded old, resigned, and for a moment Anders was brought back to his capture in Denerim, where he was held in their chantry before transport back to the circle. There was a templar there, eyes the colour of a lyrium potion, skin bleached bone white and wrinkled. He was the oldest templar Anders had ever met, a kindly old man who couldn't remember his name.

Anders was there for a week; he tried speaking to the templar a few times for want of anyone to talk to, trapped in a little cell even smaller than this one with runed cuffs over his wrists.

The old man kept repeating lines of the chant back at Anders, eyes unseeing.

There was a reason why templars retired to Val Royeaux; lyrium addiction was a little known chantry secret and retirement was an easy way to keep them out of sight. Withdrawal from lyrium was insanity followed closely by death, and the addiction only got worse by the year. There were books on the subject in the restricted section in the library - proof that templars didn't read, because if they had they would have revolted long ago over the injustice of it, to learn that spending their lives in servitude to the Maker was only rewarded by gibbering insanity.

"It could be worse," said the Orlesian, and Anders balked.

"What," Anders said, tasting blood in his mouth, a line of sticky crimson that slowly ran down his cheek from his eyebrow. Even shallow head wounds were bleeders. He spat, spraying a line of blood on the silverite helm in front of him, "what could be worse than this?"

"We can send down Tranquil to bring you your meals, and your door stays closed," he moved a hand down to Anders' erection, trained to respond to pain now as well as gentle touches. "No one to touch you or talk to you, ever. That would be much worse."

He had that for a month, once. He lost track of time within days, screaming at the door until his voice was hoarse. Admittedly the experience made him wanted to run all the more, desperate to sleep under an open, starlit sky.

Still, the reasoning behind that was crazed and flimsy, he retorted with derision, "and you think torture is better than silence?"

"I know it is," the Orlesian repeated the phrase a few times before shaking his head, snapping himself out of the loop. "Anything ... is better than silence."

He filled the silence with Ander's screams, his roaring muffled behind a line of stitches, a punishment for talking back and spitting blood. Pain was a kind of reprieve from the hours in between, where there was only a dutiful templar outside his door and the voices in his head for company.

Anders examined himself from a distance, and thought maybe this was a kind of insanity, this acceptance. As his wounds closed and the elfroot potion was washed off with a bucket of cold water, rinsing off the blood and oil and the evidence of his shame, the Orlesian leaned close and whispered, "ask Ser Cullen about your friend Karl."

"What...?" But the templar was gone, door closing quietly behind him and Anders found himself alone again, the only way for him to prove that anyone was here with him minutes ago the moisture in his hair and droplets of water on his chest. Once that too evaporated all of it could have been a hallucination and he was fast crossing that line where he would not be able to discern when his nightmares ended and reality began.

It wasn't only the quietude that was disturbing. It was the very absence of anyone to confirm what he saw and what he heard as outside of himself, that Cullen was not only a figment of his imagination. That road led to madness, and he shook it off, but he couldn't shake off those last words.

What had Cullen done to Karl?

Then Cullen was there, except he hadn't taken off his gauntlets and he was sitting on the end of his cot with a pitcher of ale and a tray of food. Anders hadn't heard him come in at all.

"There's news," and there was something behind those eyes, too dark for him to tell if it was guilt, and his templar bit his lip, shaking his head. "Maybe it's best if you eat first."

Anders' stomach sank and he wasn't even sure if he wanted to know; Cullen smelled like blood, and as he shifted on the bed to take Anders' hand there was a hesitation in his movements that signaled a new injury.

"You're hurt," his fingers twitched and he placed his hand over a gauntlet, wanting to undo those catches to check the extent of the injury, but of course that was unnecessary since Wynne would have taken care of things already.

"It's about Solona," Cullen blurted out.

He half expected that it was about Karl, but that would have been much too obvious. Karl was careful with his politics and he would never have gotten into a fight with a templar, or even be in the vicinity of a fight if he knew something was about to happen. Karl was smart; he taught Anders all he knew about survival. Solona was smarter. How had she managed to get in trouble?

"What about Solona?"

"Jowan turned out to be a blood mage and she was implicated in his escape," Cullen placed a hand over his as Anders' eyes widened in horror. "She's fine, but she's been conscripted into the wardens. Jowan killed four templars and escaped. I tried to stop him, but well," he shrugged, wincing as the movement disturbed a wound that ran all the way up his arm.

 _He could have died._ Anders might have waited, day after day wondering if he simply stopped hallucinating about a gentle templar that visited him in the dark, because no one would have thought that the death of a templar would be important to Anders.

Then he realized it was devastatingly important, and for a bright burning moment he hated Cullen for it, for the tightness in his chest and the tears that threatened to fall.

"Anders?" A metal-clad hand was turning his chin and Anders flinched, old reactions to a new paradigm - metal that wasn't about to cause bruises or pain or precede a spell of silence.

"Fuck. It's not you," Anders said, seeing the shock in Cullen's face. Then he had no way to explain, and remembered that Karl might be in danger and Cullen could be at fault, and he cursed again, "fuck."

"Solona asked me to let her see you, so she's going to sneak down here tonight. She's leaving at first light."

Cullen was misunderstanding again.

It was just as well that he thought Anders' concern was aimed at someone else, "where is she going?"

"Ostagar, I think." Cullen's lips were pursed to a thin line, then Anders thought _of course_ , he was worried for Solona too. Anders might be the one he was sleeping with, but Solona was the girl he loved and obsessed over for years. He said solemnly, "there's a blight out there."

So even if he escaped now he'd run head first into darkspawn, creatures of legend and darkness and blight sickness. But there was a silver lining to that; the chantry and the templars had a war against the end of the world to fight, and if the wardens were in ostagar it meant that the blight began in the south and he wanted to go north anyway, to Tevinter.

Anders stroked his hand over Cullen's gauntlet, soft as a breath over his wounded arm. The templar's eyes softened and he leaned in for a kiss, tentative and apologetic, and Anders had to swallow the suspicion that rose up like bile over the Orlesian's words.

"We shouldn't. Solona could be here any minute," he murmured into Cullen's lips, and the templar stilled for a moment, then moved in possessively with swipes of his tongue before pulling away.

"I think she suspects something," Cullen looked a little embarrassed. "Um. She did ask me specifically to sneak her down here to see you. I mean, I'm not your only guard. So I think she knows."

Anders gave him a look of reassurance. Solona might be a bit of a manipulative witch, but she was his friend, and the most she could have done to Cullen was to hold it over him until she needed a favor. He changed the subject, "may I see your arm?"

"Wynne already took a look at it. It's not responding to magic so she stitched it the old fashioned way," Cullen snaked his good arm behind Anders' waist, tugging him closer. "It's quite a gash, but it's not really that deep. It'll heal when Jowan's spell wears off."

It was so easy to become used to this, affectionate gestures without reservation, expressions hiding nothing, a relationship developing in the dark where they didn't have to hide from anyone. It was dangerous, both in the possibility of discovery - the Orlesian already knew, he essentially told Anders that he was going to keep their secret because he had one of his own, but he knew - and the very attachment they were forming with one another was volatile.

If Cullen wasn't here, Anders may very well have turned to blood magic already, but he also might have escaped. He might have taken that knife the Orlesian hid under the bed and used it on a guard one night.

He might have killed the Orlesian when he came in alone.

Anders moved to disengage himself from him, but Cullen only held him tighter, the metal of his gauntlet digging into his skin. Anders winced, but the templar didn't seem to notice his discomfort. He was staring at the door and suddenly Anders heard it too, the shuffling of soft boots down the stairs.

The locks were on the outside. Solona waltzed right in without knocking, and the moment she saw Anders her face lit up and she disregarded Cullen's arm around him completely.

"Anders!" Solona practically climbed into his lap with a hug, then she made a face as her magic drained away. "Mana wards. Why does it have to be mana wards? I'm going to get a headache when I get back upstairs. Oh Andraste's knickers where are my manners? I missed you so much."

The cot was dirty but she didn't seem to care, burrowing her face into Anders' shoulder to hug him some more. Cullen snatched his arm back finally to push himself off the bed, "I'll give you two some time to speak in private."

Solona batted her eyelashes at him and blabbered her thanks, but he had already turned away and took those few steps to the door. Anders gave her a puzzled look, but before he could think to ask her what was going on between them, a gray cat slipped through the open door.

It was huge, one eye half-shut with a scar over it, short stumpy tail flicking from one side to another in annoyance.

"He missed you too," she said cheerfully, as the cat jumped on to the cot and made a cat-pile near the headboard, shedding hair where Anders would eventually lay his head.

The door closed. The sound of Cullen's boots echoed through the corridor while he took a walk down deeper into the line of cells to give them some privacy. Solona dropped her smile and lowered her voice, "what are you doing with him, Anders?"

"What do you think?" He sighed.

Solona was more than the effervescent young girl mage she appeared to be, but the social butterfly status got her through doors. "I don't mind. Don't look at me like that. He's a templar," as she said this she looked at him pointedly, "I know better."

"I see what you did there."

"Duncan, the warden commander, he'll take both of us," she took his hands in hers, grip warm and gentle and firm as steel. "He can conscript you in the morning, if you want to come with me."

Anders thought about it. By his count he probably had little more than three months left in solitary, but he wasn't interested in wars, and not to mention he knew how armies usually treated deserters.

It was inevitable that he would just try to run away again, "thank you, Solona. But I don't want to run away from here right into another set of chains."

She pursed her lips, frowning. "I can conscript you against you will, you know."

"You won't."

"No, I won't," she cursed under her breath, "you're not staying for Cullen, are you?"

"Of course not," Anders said, too quick in his protest, looking down and away.

Solona raised an eyebrow before leaning in for another hug, "you've always cared too much, Anders."

"I'm not staying for him. I just don't think joining the wardens is for me."

He tucked her head under his chin as though they were children again, hiding in the pantry after dark. Solona was always the younger, smarter one, talented and cunning. When they got in trouble together she always somehow managed to wiggle out of punishment. It was really no surprise that she even got away with associating with a blood mage. Anyone else would have been sent to Aeonar, if not executed on the spot.

"There is something," he couldn't ask Cullen, a templar was a templar and ultimately could not be trusted. "How is Karl?"

Solona stiffened in his embrace, then she pulled back and there was a flash of anger that came and went - there was the real Solona. "No one told you? He's been transferred."

"Transferred? Where?"

"You're so lucky I wheedled that out of Irving," she smirked, but there was no real smile behind it, and that was expected as she revealed where Karl had been sent. "Kirkwall."

Kirkwall was like the Void on Thedas for mages, a converted slave prison aptly named the Gallows, where naughty apprentices were taught they were to be sent if they did not behave.

"Why? What did he do?"

"The report I managed to _procure_ \- yes, steal - from the Knight Commander's office says that he was 'inciting rebellion,'" she said, putting a mocking accent on the words.

"Do you think," he had to know, even if knowing solved nothing at all and could only make his life more difficult. "Do you think Cullen had anything to do with it?"

"I wouldn't put it past him," she looked at him levelly. "You know what I felt when I asked him if I can come down to see you? He's jealous. Of me. I'm sure he would have said no if I wasn't leaving first thing in the morning."

"Damn it," his hand moved up to rub at a growing headache.

"Irving will never agree to extend your sentence, by the way. I gave him a talk, just in case. He owes me one," Solona rolled her eyes, sighing. "If he managed to send Karl to Kirkwall, I'm not entirely certain Cullen won't try to keep you down here."

"He wouldn't," Anders said, though he wasn't sure of that at all himself.

"Love does funny things to people." She looked at him sympathetically, but with a hint of exasperation since she already had to deal with one love-sick idiot already. "Cullen may be sweet and innocent and all, but he's still a templar. You can twist him around your little finger all you like, and he will still have power over you."

"I'm not you, Solona. I haven't mastered the art of using people," that came out much harsher than he wanted it to, and Anders ended up apologizing again. "Sorry. I seem to have more trouble holding my tongue than I used to."

"As if you ever did," she squeezed him tighter, and that was it, _goodbye._ "I have to go. Try not to get caught next time?"

"I'll try," he smiled at her as she got up to leave. It was one thing they were good at, parting. The trick with goodbyes, he figured, was to never say goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My headcanon of Mr.Wiggums is a mangy old adopted barn cat who had half his tail burned off with an errant fireball, nowhere near as cute as Pounce. Only Anders would have found him adorable.


End file.
